iPhone Camera Lens Flare and Reflections
What is it?
Lens flare occurs when light is scattered or flared within a lens system, most often in response to bright sources of light.
This happens in all lens systems as light is refracted by the lenses and hits other surfaces before finally reaching the imaging sensor.
On the iPhone Camera, this is most frequently seen as dots orange or green in color that can be found to be directly related with a bright light source elsewhere in the image. In areas with large brightly lit areas, like signs, the entire lit area may appear inverted as a "ghost image" elsewhere in the image.
This effect is completely normal, and is common to all lens systems in high quality cameras from the iPhone to very expensive professional cameras used for digital cinema acquisition.
Ironically, the better the optical system involved, the more prominent lens flare is likely to be; it was rarely seen in old consumer devices with low quality imaging chips and plastic camera lenses but is more obvious now thanks to innovations such as Night Mode and the much higher quality lenses and imagers in newer devices.
Examples:
iPhones and other Consumer Devices:
iPhone 6:
iPhone 7:
iPhone 7+:
iPhone 8+:
iPhone X:
iPhone Xs:
iPhone 11 Pro Max:
iPhone 12 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S21:
iPhone 13 Pro Max:
DJI Phantom Drone:
Google Pixel 3:
Google Pixel 5:
Google Pixel 6:
Panasonic Digital Video Camera:
Samsung Galaxy Note:
Samsung Galaxy S20:
Premium Cameras, Still and Video:
Canon DSLR:
ARRI Alexa Mini ($50,000 US cinema digital camera with $10,000+ lens):
Unknown Cinema Digital Camera of similar cost:
How to avoid lens flare:
The best mechanism is to shift your position slightly to block the bright light causing flare or so that the bright light is not shining directly into the camera lens.
You may also be able to minimize or eliminate it by using your hand to block bright light sources that may be shining into the frame from off the border of the photo.
A variety of third party photographic apps and programs have tools that make "painting out" lens flare easier, though none is perfect.
